by Mike Miller
When I reach for her this time, my hand successfully grips hers. As I wrench her backwards, there is much resistance to my efforts. The girl is stuck as if trapped in tar.
Yet gradually her progress stops.
And then she even begins to reverse course, yielding to my tug.
“That’s it, honey,” I grunt. “Come back to me.”
“Mommy!” she cries jubilantly.
She is released, sending the two of us toppling back onto the floor. My little girl lands atop of me.
An unearthly chorus of snarls echo through the room. The back door slams closed in anger. The ghosts are no longer here.
I hug my daughter, as both laughter and tears pour from me. “Oh, my little one. My sweet angel.”
Her feet kick happily like a dog’s wagging tail. Her tiny feet pound my pelvis, but I do not mind the pain.
“I have a secret for you,” I tell her.
“What, Mommy?” She cranes her ear closer to mine.
“I’ll never let you go, darling,” I whisper. “We’ll be together forever.”
My young daughter wears a broad smile at the news. She may have her father’s eyes, but she has my smile.
Behind us, my husband screams in horror when he finds my dead body.
The woods were brown and gray. Dirty, old, miserable. Dead or dying. The rolling hills were littered with their rotting corpses, the desolate ruins of a catastrophic winter. This was not a bucolic vacation spot. It was practically the polar opposite.
The forest was supposed to be aflame with autumn hues. A majestic ode to the fall season. Warm, lush colors painting the countryside.
Felix’s memory had promised a perfect time of year for this trip, one filled with gorgeous vistas of red and gold leaves. Just like the annual family vacation had always offered. Pastoral, natural release. That’s what he was owed.
He could not tell what had failed him: his memory or the weather. But in either case, the transformative apex had passed. The world was now busy with death. What little leaves remained clung to skeletal branches, afraid to break away and drift to their doom below. Fighting a futile fight.
Felix stopped caring about the scenery. To think that its rustic charms could have improved his mood was a silly lie anyways. Really, any form of cognitive contemplation was quite tedious and irritating right now. He tried to ignore the corners of his vision and the yammering radio. These things were supposed to help him not think, but their annoying imperfections were hard to dispel. He left the curving mountain slopes of the drive to his innate autopilot and retreated into the recesses of his mind.
Though this vacation may not offer the peaceful solace he had expected, perhaps it was more fitting that he be in this ruined world. Be it poetic or ironic or some other heavy symbolism he did not want to understand, the desolate mountainside was a good fit given his rotten mood. Something pretty and lovely would likely only have angered him.
* * *
He finally found the place. His phone lost service an hour ago. A few of the unmarked roads had led to odd dead ends, as if the routes had changed. But that was not possible. In this old world, nothing changed except to get older.
The cabin was mostly as he had remembered from his youth. But like the wintering landscape, it too had lost a special sheen. The bones were still the same, yet the decades had splintered the wood and dirtied the earth. Without his father around to maintain the place, the entire grounds had withered and decomposed. Without his mother burning a fire or simmering some soup, this abode did not smell the same.
Even without any food cooking, Felix’s sly recollection assumed that there would be some sort of pleasant scent in the air to welcome him home. Maybe that was a cerebral trick from civilization’s brainwashing. Pumpkin, leaves, cinnamon. The different soaps and lotions of autumn that the ex-girlfriend would bring into their apartment starting every October.
Felix loved those smells, this time of year. Even without the girl, his nose still found the flavors everywhere. The other women before the last had all loved them too, these fragrances of fall. It was perhaps the only way that he and they were ever all the same.
When he wandered alone through a store or market and stumbled upon the scent, his nostrils would sometimes suck on those lush odors so hard that it was almost as if he were trying to inhale the very clothing off of those sublimely-scented strangers.
But now the house smelled bad. The entire world. It was a sour smell, like rotten dairy. It did not overwhelm Felix, but his nose crinkled in disgust at the fact that he was not welcomed with a sweet pumpkin-pecan aroma. Or maybe because he was not welcomed by anything at all.
His feet kicked at some errant leaves, half-expecting to find a dead body as the source of the stench.
Then he found one.
He leapt at the sight.
It was some sort of four-legged mammal, perhaps two feet long. From its spoiled condition, there was not much else that could be said for certain. Maybe it was a badger? Its mottled fur was white and stiff like small patches of fish bones. Its face and stomach were missing, and only black lumps of dried blood remained where those parts had once been.
The thing had two tails too. Or perhaps it was two animals lumped together. Or maybe that was not a second tail. He did not know. Felix was no expert, and was not of a scientifically curious mind.
He nudged the thing with his toe. It indeed was dead.
So he booted it.
At first, the violence felt good. Liberating. A nice release from the bullshit of everything else. His giant soccer kick was as strong as his portly, unathletic hips could muster. He pretended he was striking something which he hated, something despicable thing out to destroy him. The kick was filled with righteous vengeance.
But then he actually made contact with his target. The animal’s body split in two. One half tumbled forward a short distance to crackle through some old leaves. The remaining half slid a few inches along the ground.
And between those two halves was a large reserve of black goop which splattered through the air from the blow. Large globs struck tree trunks, rocks and the side of his car. Some of it shot up his pant leg.
The smell was disgustingly hellish.
“Fu--!” he began to yell, before gagging in disgust. He covered his face with his elbow pit and dashed towards the house.
The door’s lock was rusty and stuck. But after a few angry cranks with the key, it surrendered and clicked open.
The smell inside the hose was also bad. Not nearly as horrific as the dead thing outside, but like the forest themselves, the rooms still reeked of a slow and ancient death. All part of the same hopeless world that had surrendered long ago.
The beams and boards of the old wood cabin had withered. Their skin was mottled and cracked, flushing the space with aimless dust. Everything was coated in grime, though a quick swipe with his fingers proved there was still some luster left in the wizened home beneath the filth.
The stale musk was unfamiliar. While the sight of the place kindled some sparse but kind memories, the smell was completely foreign. Beneath the sour aromas of ageless dirt and rotten wood were no traces of anything he knew. The home cooking, his dad’s cologne, the fireplace, there was no hint of that life in the air. It was like a different family had lived there before. Or as if his own had never existed.
He could not trust his nose, but only his eyes. The furniture was a preserved relic of an earlier era. The bookshelves housed the same motley collection of board games and books from his youth. The same corny paintings of the same mountain landscapes hung in the same spots on the walls. The place did seem smaller than he remembered, but that was only perhaps because he had grown so much since then.
This is what he had wanted all along. This house and its unflagging serenity. Despite its poor condition, he smiled upon his successful return.
Felix found a rag and got it damp. It was assuring to know that the water still worked. He would now restore his place to its former
glory.
When he went to wipe the table, the dirt barfed into the air. He gagged at the dander, then chucked the wet cloth angrily to the floor. The idea of cleaning up the mess was noble, but the reality was stupid. He had better things to do than work on this trip. Felix would survive. He resolved to live in a world of dirt. And suddenly things were not quite as dirty anymore.
Out back, the old generator roared to life once it was fed fresh fuel. And though the refrigerator was not yet cold, he threw his few groceries inside.
Closing its door, he saw a variety of his youthful artistic endeavors. Papers covered with stick figures, happy rainbows, and colorful characters. These were his pastiche. Everyone wore a smiling grin. Some of the characters were so poorly composed, they had extra eyes or arms. Felix laughed at how naïve and stupid he had once been. Yet he was still glad his mother had preserved these artifacts.
He was not sure what to do next, but he was tired. So he went to the bedroom. As he flung the top blanket back off the bed, another field of dust kicked into the sky. But the sheets below were clean.
As he nestled into the bed, the dislodged dirt rained softly down on him like pixie dust. He began to absent-mindedly touch himself, but fell asleep quickly instead.
* * *
He woke up quickly, filled with terror. It took him a moment to realize where he was, and where he was not. The faintest memories of a nightmare left him shocked and sweaty. In the dark dream he had just experienced, he was not the victim, but rather the perpetrator of the evil.
He was a hunter, the stalker of vulnerable women. First, watching them as unsuspecting prey. Magically hovering over them, invisible to their senses. He’d study them curiously, patiently. Plotting how to take them. What he’d do with them next.
Then he’d strike. Rushing in fast like a hawk swooping down on a mouse. He could feel his arms and hands stretching into giant talons. Every target would turn and scream just before he struck. The same terrified expression on each of them.
Felix never got to enjoy the catch. As soon as he conquered one, he would be onto the next. An endless string of kills, of scared and frightened victims.
What rattled Felix now was not the viciousness of his actions, but rather his glee at its execution. He loved being the monster.
But the dream made sense. Its meaning was not so mysterious or difficult. He understood how complex things like his psyche and subconscious worked. He’d had experiences both good and bad in his love life, some wonderful highs and bitter lows.
And maybe there were a few occasions where he felt like violence. Murder even. That was irrelevant, nothing special. Just like the next guy. He never actually hurt any of his lovers, no matter how insane they had been.
He understood how his slumbering imagination was the manifestation of his desires to hunt. His head had so confused everything together.
Felix had brought a pair of his guns along for the trip, excited to finally unload them outside of a crowded and expensive range. He was not really so intent on the sport of hunting, per se, but rather just shooting something.
But now the violence made him feel guilty. Or maybe just how eager he was. He knew that he should not be so excited to shoot anything. Be it a small squirrel or an old bottle.
Felix knew he was a man reeling, lost and looking to be better. The violence was just misdirected rage. The whole point of this trip to nowhere was to dissipate the suffering, His loneliness. The lovers, the family, all gone now. He needed to embrace his condition, without the temptation of making new connections with anyone else.
The heady thoughts made Felix rise from his bed. He paced the room to help him think. The dirt caked to his moist feet as he shuffled back and forth, mind racing to exorcise the bad feelings from both his waking and sleeping lives.
Soon a cleared trail on the floor appeared from his tracks. He made motions towards the bathroom or living room, small cuts as if he had settled on a direction. But then he remained in his rut. He knew he should have returned to bed at this midnight hour, but felt like he was close to progress, a major breakthrough of some sort.
As his indecision wavered, a low buzz was heard in the distance. Or maybe a growl. Before he could decide which, it morphed into a loud howl, short but anguished. He could not imagine which woodland creature could have made the noise, one that sounded so human.
Just as quickly as it had started, the sound ended. Complete silence.
The disoriented man exited the bedroom to investigate.
There was no light from outside. The house had always been dark at night, but tonight’s blindness was complete. Any moon or starlight was blocked by both cloud and trees. From memory, he began to shuffle through the room. His arms reached out before him like a stumbling mummy as he blindly felt for the walls.
His right shin knocked against something hard and unforgiving. The coffee table or a stool, maybe the firewood. He staggered around the object to reach the wall. His hands crept along the surface, his fingers crawling over knotted wood walls like bloodhounds searching for a scent.
A sharpness poked his left hand, nearly breaking his fingers backward. The sudden pain startled him.
His left hand had bumbled awkwardly into the stone chimney. He recovered to work himself around the fixture.
From the quietness of the forest outside, a new sound was heard. It was like the lowing of cattle, a plaintive wail that was faint and lonely. The possible source of this odd noise confused him too. Felix figured that only three possible families of sounds could exist out here: growls, howls and chirps. So far, both of tonight’s defied such categorization.
The blind man finally fought his way over to the front door. He flipped the first switch, thinking it would illuminate the living room.
Instead, the outdoor patio light came on, casting a golden hue over the front steps.
On the porch stood something staring at him.
Before he could look closer, it dashed away. He heard the leaves scatter as it departed.
Felix yelped and hopped backwards. His hip jammed against a chair painfully, but his feverish mind was not concerned with the pain.
He cursed himself for not remembering to bring one of his guns. Then he cursed himself again for cowardly craving one.
Once he had resolved his frayed nerves, he cautiously approached the window. He peered around the edge of the frame to find the outdoors empty. A yellow halo only illuminated the porch and a few dozen feet into the forest. Then the tall rows of trees were engulfed by the black void of night.
He tried to piece together what he had witnessed. He remembered best the thing’s eyes: large, dark. Almost haunted or forlorn. The visitor was the size of perhaps a small child, and stood on its hind legs. He would have dismissed it as a raccoon or possum, except for another feature he clearly remembered: its golden hue. Perhaps it was just the yellow light, but the visitor had an unnaturally bright color. He thought animals were supposed to blend into their surroundings.
His breath began to fog the window as he approached the window. As he went to clean the cloudy surface, his hand touched the cold glass, and a shrill scream sounded from the woods.
Felix shrank in terror as the noise echoed over him. It seemed to encompass the entire house. This was the same voice he had first heard. But while the prior cry had been hurt and lonely, this one reverberated with a fiercer intensity. It sounded as if it were directed at him too.
He stumbled backwards, shielding his ears with his hands. The noise continued its assault, so he fled into the back of the house.
The scream paused for breaths, but continued its mad wailing all the way until Felix slid into his bed. The hellish sounds suddenly ceased, though its howl seemed to echo in the silent night. The woeful cries did not return for the remainder of the evening.
* * *
In the morning, he awoke to a new sound. It was faint, but its bizarre, trembling falsetto helped to quickly stir him from bed with curiosity.
Though the su
n was bright outside, the house remained steeped in shadow from its limited windows. But unlike the night, the shade of the day was hardly so prevalent to prevent him to see where to walk.
In the living room, the sound became clearer. He kept listening to it, intently and with a cocked ear to be sure. Yet after a near solid minute of careful study, he concluded that the noise was not the pained caterwauls of a dying of lustful animal. Actually, the strange series of squeals were some kind of wretched singing.
It was horribly performed. The melody consisted of shrill squeaks and whines that conformed to no earthly scale. Its rhythm was sloppy. And the various notes all stung with bitter discordance. But the crude tune was still playfully delivered as if being hummed by a happy child.
Grabbing a poker from the fireplace, he cautiously left the house to investigate.
The morning frost singed his exposed skin, though he quickly acclimated. With puffs of breath drifting from his mouth, he sought the source of the bizarre performance. The song was coming from the back of the house.
Like an out-of-shape ninja, he crept through the shadows, hugging the walls where he could. Despite his best efforts for stealth, his bulk still made the tired wood porch creak loudly with each step.
As he carefully peeked around the corners, his grip hardened on his weapon. He remembered now the artillery in his suitcase, but resolved that to return for it was an admission of cowardice.
He bravely circled around the house to be outside of his own bedroom. He could see the guns inside.
Felix could tell now that the noise came from above, so his eyes scanned the trees. The skeletal limbs were so myriad that their branches locked together in a dizzying pattern. The crisscrossing jags blanketed the sky, weaving all the different details of the forest into one broad tapestry. Dead leaves, old bark, gray sky – everything spun together in a faded, colorless world. It was as if he were caught under a wide, giant net. Trapped together with this cryptic crooner.